This is actually pretty big news - both exciting and tragic at the same time. Opera has revealed Opera Ice, its next mobile browser, to PocketLint. This new browser represent a big shift in both user interface as well as rendering engine, since it has a new, unique interface, as well as a new rendering engine... New to Opera, that is, as it's a WebKit-browser.

As for the news, close the doors and give the money back to the stockholders. What is the point if its nothing but a skin on webkit? And why isn't Opera growing some stones and suing Apple for what is obviously anti-competitive behavior? last I heard the EU didn't take too kindly for the "lock in the users, our way or the highway" attitude so you'd think they'd not cave just because its an iToy.

If all the companies keep rolling over and kissing the ring of Apple we might as well accept the future is gonna be nothing but locked down game consoles, where you can't do anything without corporate approval and the second corporate doesn't support it anymore into the trash it goes. Never before have we had such great tech so cheap but instead of this empowering us we're gonna end up with the worst of the 80s, where everything was locked down and proprietary and didn't play nice with anything else.

As for the news, close the doors and give the money back to the stockholders. What is the point if its nothing but a skin on webkit?

A skin is just a bunch of images. A completely new UI built from scratch is a huge undertaking. If they do make a new UI on top of WebKit it's going to take a massive amount of engineering resources.

And why isn't Opera growing some stones and suing Apple for what is obviously anti-competitive behavior? last I heard the EU didn't take too kindly for the "lock in the users, our way or the highway" attitude so you'd think they'd not cave just because its an iToy.

Why would Opera sue Apple? Antitrust cases are not decided through the courts. It's handled by the Competition Commissioner. And obviously there's no basis for reporting Apple

You are extremely ignorant if you think it's a matter of Opera admiring Apple too much to do anything. There's simply no basis for an antitrust case. Not yet at least.

If all the companies keep rolling over and kissing the ring of Apple

Who is doing that? Not Google. Not Opera. Not Mozilla. Who are you talking about?

Nice to see somebody else notices the exact same crap MSFT got busted for Apple is doing WORSE and getting away with it. I mean imagine if MSFT had locked Windows to the hardware so it was impossible to install any other OS and made it so the ONLY way to install programs without actually having to hack the OS was to go through a site where they kept God-like control and refused to have any competition to their own products?

And I apologize to those in the EU if I don't understand what procedures one performs to get something taken up by the EU commission, we don't have anything like that in the USA anymore so there really is no basis of comparison. The DoJ was defanged by Bush II after the MSFT case and pretty much just rubber stamps anything a corp wants to do so you can be as anti-competitive as you want here as long as your lobbyists cuts checks to the right people. Kinda sad when the only hope Americans have of not being screwed by a monopolist is the EU taking up the case, but that is the only hope we have left, everything here is for sale like some banana republic.